Elizabeth Hewley passes away

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By Our ReporterElizabeth Hawley, the encyclopedia of mountaineering, died of pneumonia in Kathmandu on Friday.
According to the officials at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Hawley, the founder of the Himalayan Database, breathed her last at the CIWEC Hospital — a travel medicine centre to treat foreign diplomats and aid workers in Nepal. She was 95. She was admitted to the hospital a week before.
Hawley, who first arrived in Kathmandu in February 1958, made Nepal her second home. The government had also conferred honorary Nepali citizenship on Hawley.
Born in 1923 and educated at the University of Michigan, Elizabeth Hawley had been living in Kathmandu ever since her second visit to Nepal in 1960. She had been working with the Reuters news agency covering mountaineering news, including the 1963 American expedition that was the first from the US to traverse Mount Everest.
For many years, until August, 2010, she was also New Zealand’s honorary consul in Nepal.
Her demise made news headlines around the globe.
Newspapers in Kathmandu reported that her family members and relatives in the United States were informed of her demise. Many of her colleagues, who were shocked by her demise, had arrived in Kathmandu to pay her tribute.